Chapter IV.2

The spider went ahead, her eight creamy legs dancing noiselessly along the path, and Loofah had to stride out to keep up.

'I thought you were done for back there, lad, I really did,' she said.

'What, you mean when he got the gun out?'

'Nay, before that. When the little hussy was being all lovey-dovey—I thought she had you good and proper.'

She was now the palest of pale yellows, Devon cream with a splash of sunshine.

'Oh, I see,' said Loofah, 'You thought I was going to…'

'But you were too clever for 'er, weren't you? I should've known, you being who you are, 'n all.'

Loofah basked in the warm glow of his own virtue.

'I wouldn't think of it for a single moment,' he said.

The woods were more dense here, with clumps of slender ash, their smooth grey trunks writhing slowly in the broken sunlight as if fashioned from living plastic. The path was punctuated with fallen logs which playfully arched up to trip Loofah as he hurried after the spider. Broken lakes of bluebells lapped around the path and flowed away down the slope on the right-hand side.

'Usually works, mind you. I've seen 'er catch dozens like that.'

'Catch? But didn't she just want to…? You know, for fun.'

'She don't do nowt for "fun", not that one. Nay, lad, the lovey-dovey stuff is what she does to get 'er own way wi' folk—it's a nasty little trick she's learned somewhere along the way. The minute a chap's gone all 't'way wi' 'er—if you'll pardon my French—then he no longer seems to have any wits of 'is own. Just does whatever she says and follows 'er around the whole time. Makes you sick to see it. Of course every girl likes to wind a bloke around 'er little finger every now and then, but 't'ain't right, not what she does.'

The velociraptor-faced harlot grinned out from the swirling bark of a beech trunk. She snapped the leather lead in her left hand and the bloodhound obediently lay down at her feet, gazing up at its mistress with blind adoration. Loofah shuddered quickly.

'So that's why she's always been so keen on…?'

'Ay. But you were always one step ahead of 'er, weren't you, lad?' said the spider, turning to wink at Loofah with four of her eight eyes, 'Nobody's fool, eh?'

He smiled modestly.

'Morals of an alley cat, that one,' she continued, 'And all strictly against 't Law, of course. Same as that other little party piece of 'ers. Ugh! Unnatural if you ask me.'

'It's certainly not nice to watch,' agreed Loofah, 'The way her skin melted, then all those creepy-craw—.' He stopped himself in time, remembering his manners. 'Er, you seem to know her quite well—the one that looks like Norbert, I mean.'

''Appen I do,' said Mrs Fulbright.

'And do you know Norbert as well?'

'Like I say, I know 'im. 'Ave done since 'e started coming 'ere, years ago that was. 'E were a nice lad in them days—at least for a foreigner. Such a shame 'e turned out for the bad.'

The spider scuttled under a fallen birch trunk. For a moment—between colours—she was the purest white, as if carved from a pearl.

'Mind you, they've always been a bit of a rum bunch 'ave that lot. Always at each other's throats, 'specially since they've been like—um—.'

'Divided?'

As he clambered over the branch, it tried to trip Loofah, nearly tipping him into a pool of bluebells.

'You'd think they'd get on like an 'ouse on fire, wouldn't you, them being—you know—like they are. Mind you, I could never abide my sister and we were as alike as two peas in a pod—so's me old mum would say, anyways.'

Mrs Fulbright paused pensively as her next colour slid into place: the subtlest of eggshell greys.

'Maybe it's being away from 'ome so much makes 'em like they are,' she mused.

'You mean they get homesick? Perhaps that's why they're all so very keen to get back there.'

'Nay, lad, wanting to go back's got nowt to do wi' missing 'ome,' said the spider, 'You see, once you've been a while over 'ere, a bit of it rubs off on you, and so's when you go 'ome you've got sommat that the rest back there haven't. And that's what they're after, to be a bit special, like what they used to be.'

'Will that be the same for me?' asked Loofah, 'Will I be special when I get back?'

'Oh aye, that you will. Particularly after all your doings wi' 't government people.'

A sudden pulse of something inside—not unpleasant—puffed Loofah's chest out, stretching his tee shirt and pushing open his jacket. He smiled down condescendingly as a lone briar went for his ankle and missed.

'I'm certainly getting a lot of official attention,' he said.

'Well, they've got a helluva lot riding on you, haven't they?'

The path skirted the upper rim of a deep hollow scooped out of the sloping bank. At the centre of this arboreal amphitheatre, an armoured knight reared up on his white charger, the lime green and orange livery of his breast plate and helmet plumes casting a lurid glow over the serried ranks—the white deer, the taciturn flatworm, the cow with her laparotomy scar nearly healed, and all the others—that had gathered round to cheer their champion.

'Mind you, I reckon you're a good un, you—I reckon you'll do alright. You've not been spoiled, 'ave you? Still got a bit of respect, for 't Law and that.'

The beatific knight gazed skywards and was caught in a sudden shaft of golden light that set his armour glowing like radium and illuminated the shimmering halo that hovered above his plumed head.

'Not like the rest of 'em.' The spider paused briefly, her greyness shimmering with disapproval. 'Ee, I don't know, just because they know a fancy trick or two, they think they can do just about whatever they want. But they can't, you know—which is why they're forever coming a cropper.'

The rearing charger stomped bucket-sized hooves into the forest floor. A gaggle of rag-clad figures grovelled before it, holding up imploring hands to the stern knight. Two had cringing lizards' faces and he also recognised the half-existent ghost. The little group, however, was incomplete.

'But what about Mr Stobart?' he asked, 'He's law abiding, isn't he?'

'Is 'e buggery. Worst of the lot, that one, a law unto himself. But with 'im not being 'ere, there's not a lot anyone can do.' Her eight legs quivered with righteous indignation. 'If you ask me, it needs someone from 'ere to go over there and give that uppity beggar a right good lesson.'

Loofah watched as the knight lunged forward and thrust his lance—orange and green, the colours spiralled like a barber's pole—through the hissing throat of a cowering dragon, spilling black gore onto its white shirt and tie, and onto the grey corporate pinstripe that encased its scaly coils. As the dragon died, writhing like a worm on a pin, Loofah turned away with a grim smile—and saw the spider scuttling up the path, almost out of sight. Leaving the triumphant scene with some regret, he hurried after her.

The path dipped and then wound sharply through an interlocking maze of tall holly whose leathery leaves, rimmed with glittering hypodermics, jabbed viciously at Loofah as he brushed past. It was when he emerged—thankfully unscathed—from the spiked labyrinth and back into open woodland that he at last caught up with Mrs Fulbright.

His arachnid guide had paused at the top of a blue-lapped slope that swept down into a wide hollow. Rimmed by huge beeches, the dish-floor was a Persian carpet of woodland flowers: not only bluebells, but also violets, greater celandine, speedwell, and wood sorrel. Butterflies with coloured metallic wings hung in the viscous air, fluttering languidly among the forest of slender sunlight shafts that filtered through the canopy.

At the centre of the hollow was a pile of red satin cushions draped with violet and yellow throws of Thai silk, from the midst of which rose a ridge-like hill—which, somewhat incongruously, was pink.

As Loofah quickly realised, the hill was in fact a huge pig, fast asleep. Butterflies fluttered around the vast bulk, occasionally trying to land on the perfumed bristles of the gently heaving flanks, or playfully tickling the shutter-flap ears that were closed over its slumbering face to leave only the snout exposed, this a slab of pink India-rubber pierced at the right nostril by a ring of gold.

'Snoozing again, as per usual,' said Mrs Fulbright—now pale blue like an April sky—and then scuttled down into the flower-strewn hollow.

The spider fussed quietly about, plumping cushions and straightening rumpled silk. She had now turned a nice rose pink, as to harmonise with the mighty swine. As the dazzling collage of colour swirled and danced around his feet, Loofah stood and gazed up in some awe at the porcine behemoth which seemed to fill the hollow; it was indeed a big animal, more like part of the landscape than a pig. It slept on, each ponderous breath sucking in through its snout, rumbling through the dark caverns within and then, with a gentle snore, rolling out into the languid light.

'Um, Mrs Fulbright?'

The spider lifted a foreleg to her palpi and hushed quietly.

'I don't want 'im waking up until I've got a bit of 'ousework done,' she mouthed.

'Oh—sorry,' said Loofah, now sotto voce, 'You've been very kind to me and I don't want to sound ungrateful. But I think there's been a little misunderstanding.'

'Misunderstanding? I don't know what you mean, lad.'

'But surely—' a gentle earthquake rumbled deep within the pink ridge '—this isn't the official I'm looking for—' then emerged slowly, like an extended belch '—this isn't the Great Bore of Today, is it?'

'That most certainly is the appellation by which I am known in these parts.' A voice like boulders knocking together at the bottom of a river, almost too bass to hear, rumbled out from under the shutter-ears. 'And I do not take kindly to being told otherwise.'

'Oh, so you've woken up, 'ave you?' said the spider, brushing a pair of over-enthusiastic butterflies from the bulging pink cliff of its belly.

'Didn't have much choice, did I? What, with all your damned cacophony.'

'Ee, just 'ark at 'im,' tutted the spider, as the boulder voice grumbled on semi-audibly about incessant chatter and uninvited visitors. Not a good start, thought Loofah glumly.

'I didn't mean to be rude,' he said, when it had finally rumbled into silence, 'It's just that I was expecting an extremely dull person, not a big—.'

'Then I am sorry to disappoint you, young man.' For the first time the pig moved, its ears flapping crossly in time with its speech, releasing the words one by one into the liquid air, like fat little fish. 'Because I think you'll find I am a rather interesting boar.'

''E is, you know,' chipped in Mrs Fulbright, with what could have been a hint of arachnid irony, 'Much better than the telly.'

'Not only am I a noted raconteur and much sought after public speaker, but were you aware that I am also a renowned expert in many fields of academic study?'

'I wasn't actually, no,' admitted Loofah.

'No? Then you are not familiar with my work, for example on horology, the subject of my very first doctorate?'

'I'm not sure that I am,' said Loofah, knowing that he was going to offend it again.

'What? Am I to understand that you have never taken an interest—however brief—in the history of time?'

'Um, no. I haven't, er, actually.'

The earthquake began again and the ears quivered with sudden indignation.

'Not yet, anyway,' added Loofah quickly, 'Though it is a subject I certainly intend to take up. Time permitting, that is.'

'Time permitting? Time permitting?' rumbled the pig, 'And why would time not permit a study of itself? Come, let us begin. No time like the present, as I always say.'

'You mean—now?'

'"Now" and "the present" generally mean the same thing in my book, and it is in the present where one must always make a start. You can try the future if you like, but in my experience it always makes you wait. And the past is a different place altogether—they do things differently there.'

'I see. At least I think I do.'

'You do? Excellent—then we're making progress. Now, let's move on. Lesson number two: the measurement of time.' The porcine pedagogue paused briefly before beginning its lecture. 'First key fact: an instrument for measuring of the passage of time is called a "chronometer". Did you know that the first chronometer was called a "sun dial"?'

'No, I don't think I did.'

'A sun-dial is a type of watch that works in the sun. It's the light, you see, it moves the hands round. A bit like a windmill really, though without the wind. Invented by the Assyrians the sun-dial was, the same people who gave us side-zip shoes and Twix bars. Marvellous invention, a major breakthrough, completely revolutionised civilisation itself, don't you know. Know why that is?—of course you do! Because before the sun-dial there was no time at all, meaning that everybody was always very, very rushed, no one ever managed to get a single thing done—and how can a civilisation develop under conditions like that, eh? Though of course it did have one minor technical drawback, the good old sun dial. Any idea what that might have been?'

'Um,' pondered the eager pupil.

'Exactly,' said the pig, 'When there wasn't enough sunshine to move the hands properly the damned things went slow—and as a consequence cloudy days lasted much longer than sunny ones, which was a bit of a bore for everybody. One particularly rainy day—a Monday, I think it was—went on for a whole week, which nobody liked at all. And of course nights were even worse—might have gone on forever if they hadn't invented the "moon-dial" as well.' The pig paused, thought for a moment, then added: 'And the "star-dial" for when there was no moon.'

'Moon-dials and star-dials—ee, whatever will they think of next,' muttered Mrs Fulbright to herself. She had now clambered on top of the porcine hill and was brushing the stiff bristles with her forelegs while rubbing aromatic oil from a silver vial into the glossy pink skin.

'It was the Egyptians that cracked it,' rumbled the horologist, 'Came up with the digital watch. No more need for sunlight, you see. You just moved the hands round with your finger—or your "digit" as they used to call it in those days. Another major technical advance, don't you know, because if you were having a miserable time, you just moved the hands on until things perked up a bit. Or on the other hand if you were having a bit of fun, you kept them just where they were for hours on end. Though of course you can see the problem straight away, can't you?'

The ear shutters suddenly flapped open and two tiny blue eyes peered out at him—like Miss Leggett's, thought Loofah, only prettier. It took a couple of seconds to click that the pig was waiting for an answer.

'Um, yes. Er, no—I mean probably,' he replied.

'Spot on,' said the pig, 'Everybody got out completely of sync. I'd be feeling miserable and would fast forward, whereas you'd be as happy as a sandboy and would dawdle along. In no time at all, I'm half way to next Monday and you still haven't reached lunchtime. Pretty soon everyone was spread out all over the shop—and especially when people started pushing the hands back as well as forward. Just imagine it: you're trying to organise Christmas, but your kids are still on their summer holidays, your wife's gone back to primary school, and your Aunty Mary's getting married—for the two hundred and twenty-third time. A right palaver it was, I can tell you.' The pig yawned deeply, showing the wet red trough of its mouth and two perfectly polished ivory tusks at the front of its lower jaw, each with a ruby embedded in the tip. 'Needed someone pretty clever to sort the whole thing out, someone with a scientific bent, don't you know? The Greeks, that was—people like Archimedes, the chap who invented bath-time.'

The pig paused briefly, then carried on, the words slurring into each other like melting chocolates: 'Invented bath… invented time. Bath… time, time…bath…,' until at last the rumbling blurred out gently into a quiet snore.

'Has 'e gone again?' asked the spider. Now pastel beige, she had finished her work on the ridge and was lowering a ladder of sticky spun pearl down the gently heaving flank.

'Yes, I think so.'

'Thank goodness for that, then. A bit o' peace and quiet for a change, give me a chance to get on wi' 'is tea.'

'Your employer certainly does have, um, a lot to say.'

'He 'as that and no mistake,' she said, clambering down her ladder, 'Mind you, 'e's got a lot to talk about—'ad a right old life has our Mr B. 'E were born on a farm, you know. Can you imagine that—on a farm, wi' all sorts of animals and things like that?'

'Yes. I mean, no, I can't imagine it,' said Loofah.

'And just look at the size of 'im.' Mrs Fulbright paused in her descent and cast a glance up the towering cliff of her sleeping master's chest. 'Just think of all the words that'll hold—no wonder it never stops.'

Loofah too gazed up at the living mountain.

'Truly a great boar,' he mused aloud, 'But I wonder why "of today"?'

Even as he spoke the pink ridge began to tremble and the ears quivered as if brushed by a light breeze. The rumbling started like distant thunder, muffled but rolling steadily towards audibility.

''Ere we go again,' muttered the spider, 'And me not even started on the lunch.'

'Today and today and today,' rumbled the waking pig, 'creeps in this petty pace from today to today, to the last syllable of recorded time!'

At the end of its declamation the pig eyed him closely, a true Thespian waiting for the audience's response.

'Very impressive, very impressive indeed,' obliged Loofah, 'But why part of your name?'

'Because I am of today, of course. I am a boar—a Great Boar, if you will—of today.' The ears quivered as it spoke, wafting scented smugness into the sunlit air.

'I don't think I understand,' said Loofah.

'You ought to, young man, because we covered "the present" in lesson one.' The pig fixed him with a blue-beady eye.

'"The present"?'

'Every moment I have been alive has been the present,' explained the pig, in a condescending tone, 'And the present is always located in today—this, I think, is axiomatic. Hence by simple logic it can be concluded that I have always lived… today.'

'I'm not sure that's altogether true, is it?'

'It most certainly is!'

'But what about yesterday and the day before yesterday and last Monday? You were alive on all of those days and they aren't today, are they?'

The pig sighed with infinite patience. 'Not now they're not, I do agree,' it said, 'But then I'm not alive in them now, am I? I'm alive right here and now, today. And don't forget that when I was alive on those other days, they were today as well.'

'I don't think that can be right,' said Loofah, dubiously, 'You can't have more than one today, can you?'

'You can have as many todays as you want, dear boy, as long as you only have them one at a time.'

'I suppose you're right,' conceded Loofah, not without reluctance, 'But then surely it's the same for me, isn't it? If you're the Great Boar of Today, then I'm the Great Seeker of Today.'

'No, you're not,' said the Boar, curtly.

'Yes, I am,' protested Loofah, 'I'm alive today and always have been, same as you.'

'Rubbish,' said the pig.

The spider tutted quietly, though whether at Loofah's argumentativeness or the pig's rudeness it was hard to tell.

'It's not rubbish!'

The ears opened and the little eyes drilled into him, like splinters of blue glass.

'Where're you from, boy?' demanded their owner.

'Um, from over there.'

'Exactly. Different time zone, don't you know. They're one day behind—when it's today here, it's yesterday over there.'

'Are you sure?' Loofah asked lamely—but it had him and he knew it.

'Positive. Don't forget I am a fully qualified chronologist,' said the triumphant pig, 'So you can be the Seeker of Yesterday if you like. We'll see about the "Great" at the end of the project.'

With a resigned shrug, Loofah slumped into his jacket—he was beaten. The pig, however, was magnanimous in victory.

'Now, young sir, enough of this jolly banter. Is there anything else I can be doing for you?'

Loofah brightened immediately. 'There is actually,' he said, 'I was hoping for some information.'

'Then you've come to the right boar,' said the pig, 'Because if it's information you're after, I've plenty to give away—unlimited supplies, in fact. Now, let me see, where were we? Ah yes, the Romans. Fine fellows, the Romans, as I was just saying—.'

'Um, excuse me,' interjected Loofah, boldly trying to stall the gathering momentum of his teacher's discourse.

'—And no finer topic for—.'

'Excuse me. Sorry.'

The pig stammered to an indignant halt and fixed him with another glare.

'To be frank, Mr Boar,' said Loofah, with some diffidence, 'But it wasn't so much the Romans that I wanted to hear about.'

'So you know all about the Romans then, do you?' demanded the pig.

'Well, no, not everything.'

'Then do I take it, young sir, that you don't want to know? That you would rather remain—' the ears paused before rolling contemptuously over the final two words '—in ignorance?'

Loofah opened his mouth to protest—but realised this would be futile and closed it again.

'Well, sir? Would you?'

Sighing a resigned sigh, Loofah shook his head.

'Excellent,' said the pig, 'I like a man who wants to improve himself with a modicum of education. And, as I'm sure you'll agree, there can be few topics more urgently in need of study than the Romans. For it was them that solved the Egyptian problem, you see, by abolishing time altogether. Well, not actually abolishing it, more stopping it—at twenty-two minutes past three on a Monday afternoon, to be precise. By edict of the emperor himself, so no one dared to disobey. Sorted the synchronisation trouble out in the twinkling of an eye, it did, because everyone was right there, just where you wanted them, all together at twenty-two minutes past three.'

The pig was now in its stride. The ears flapped contentedly and the voice rumbled on, a slow river flowing down to the sea.

'They say Rome wasn't built in a day. And indeed it wasn't—it was built in a tiny, minuscule fraction of a second. The immeasurably small sliver of time between twenty-two minutes past three and twenty-two minutes past three, to be precise. And that's why their empire lasted so long—with time stopped dead in its tracks keeping the whole thing going it was easy.' It paused, looking more than usually pleased with itself. 'Relatively speaking that is, if you'll pardon my little horological pun.'